1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to instrumentation used in orthopaedic surgery, and, more particularly, to instrumentation providing for the alignment of milling guides or other instrumentation used to prepare bone for receiving a prosthesis.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an orthopaedic surgery to replace part or all of a patient's joint with a prosthetic implant, a portion of the implant receiving bone is prepared to closely match the mating surfaces of the implant. During an orthopaedic surgery to replace a knee joint, the distal end of the femur is prepared to accommodate a femoral knee component and the proximal end of the tibia is prepared to accommodate a tibial component.
Depending on the type of femoral implant to be accommodated by the femur, and the particular side of body with which the implant is to be mated, there is a small set of angles to which the implant must be oriented relative to the mechanical axis of the bone. Typically, in the preparation of the femur, for example, one or more cutting guides are placed adjacent the distal femur in a specific order to resect portions of the femur in succession. These cutting guides are generally individually aligned by the surgeon with reference to specific anatomic landmarks.
What is needed in the art is an intramedullary rod with an attached guide mechanism to align the cutting or milling guides with a predetermined angle with the mechanical axis of the bone.